Heaven Is A Place On Earth With You
by hvrcules
Summary: "I love you." "Claire- I don't understand-" "I love you." -promise me you'll remember that you're mine- Rated T for mentions of torture. Is officially multi chaptered!
1. How The Beginning Of The End Begun

**AN: I know I should be updating my other story, but I just watched Season 1 of Daredevil on Netflix in one day as therapy for the emotional damage caused by Avengers Age Of Ultron, and honestly, if my new OTP doesn't become endgame canon I will be writing a very, very, angry and sappy letter to the scriptwriter of this show and to Marvel. For now, I'll just let out my pain with a little angsty, oneshot-but-maybe-multi-chapter fic. Title creds and chapter title creds to the beautiful Lana Del Rey, who's music I think almost perfectly fits Matt and Claire's relationship with it's moody, dark, cinematic tone and gorgeous, hopeless romantic lyrics.**

"Hey Claire? You in there?" She cautiously peeked out of the viewing glass in her door, gun drawn behind her back. The apartment building superintendent was standing outside, fiddling with a piece of snow white paper in his aged and chubby hands.

Claire quickly placed the gun back down on a side table, tucking it under the frayed edge of a thick curtain. She opened the door, moving aside to let them in.

"How can I help you, Johnson?" His expression turned oddly apologetic, a weird pulsing in his throat putting her on edge.

"Sorry I have to do this, but-" Before she could respond, a stunning pain echoed through her head and the world went black.

*****************line break*************************

She came to chained to a column, her eyes slowly fluttering open. Almost automatically, her hands started struggling against the metal, her vocal cords working furiously to let out a resounding scream.

Hot tears ran down her face, mixing with the blood matted in her hair as she struggled against the concrete structure. _Useless_, she raged in her mind. _Absolutely fucking useless!_ With another cry, she slightly bent open a single link in the chain keeping her captive, weakening her bonds.

Sharp footsteps echoed in her cranial space, a suited man with an ordinary face and chestnut brown hair came into view.

"Hello, Miss Temple. Mr. Fisk sends his regards." The man's gloved hand came in contact with her cheek, and she saw stars.

******************line break*********************

Claire came to a second time, having been doused in ice cold water and violently shook awake, her bruised skull coming in contact with the column with a few resounding thuds.

A phone was jammed between the crook of her black-and-blue neck and her swollen, bloody ear.

"Here are your options, Miss Temple-" Before the man could go on, she spit in his face, blood and mucus staining his perfectly tailored, crisp suit.

In response, he reached around her, grabbing her left pinky finger. A second later, screams fought to make their way out of her throat as it hung broken, creamy white bone stark against her crimson and caramel flesh.

"Option number one. You call 'Daredevil' using the phone we have so generously provided for you. You tell him whatever will make him-" The man paused for a moment.

"Ah, _'Whatever will hurt him the most_'. Mr. Fisk's words, not mine. After you have done so, I will put a bullet in your head. Clean and easy." He smiled, his lips as thin as a knife's sharpened edge.

"Option number two, and by far my personal favorite. You don't call 'Daredevil", we will draw and quarter you, that is to say, we will attach your limbs to four separate cars and slowly rip you into four separate chunks, and spread what's left around the city for your masked lover to come and find. Now, which one will you pick?"

"Why the hell should I take orders from you-" Her right pinky cracked, mimicking her other hand.

"One, or two?"

"Fuck you, Suit And Tie." The man sighed, as if scolding a petulant child, before bring his foot up and stomping down on her right foot. Her back arched against the concrete in pain, eyes wide open, tears cleaning her bloodstained face.

"One, or two?"

***************line break**************************

He pressed dial for her.

After a moment, the phone began to ring, the vibrations jostling what was probably a complex fracture in her skull.

Claire prayed under her breath, murmuring nonsensical words _to God, to Jesus, that Matt Murdock, for once in his goddamned life_, wouldn't pick up her call. That he would ignore her, that he was working a case or on a date and _wasn't available at this time_.

_Just her luck_, she thought, as the sound of the phone on the other end being picked up went through her eardrums.

"Uh, hey Claire. What's up?" The gun leveled at her forehead made it hard to concentrate on keeping her tone level, but feeling the barrel nudging against her bruises encouraged her to press forward.

"Not much, really. How're you doing? Haven't seen you around in awhile." Her voice quivered on the last syllable, the man's finger coming to press slowly down on the trigger of the revolver, as if to signify his displeasure with her performance.

"Claire, are you alright? You sound kind of-" She quickly threw out a hoarse laugh, trying to distract Matt from the pain in her breath.

"No, no I'm fine. Just bumped into a counter at home. You busy tonight?" He paused on the other side, clearly thrown off by her question. Claire's mind registered the increasing pressure in which the man was holding the gun against her head. She could hear Matt stuttering, trying to formulate a response.

The seconds left she had alive ticked down in her ears, as quick as her heartbeat. Matt taught me that, she thought absentmindedly.

"I love you, you know that?"

"You- uh- what?"

"I love you. Seems I couldn't stop myself from falling in love with you after all."

"Claire- I don't understand-"

"I love you."

*****************line break*********************

Matt chuckled at another one of Foggy's failed jokes, groping around his desk for the bagel he heard Karen place down not a few moments ago.

His bony hands finding their prize, he carefully positioned the bread at his lips and-

His phone beeped.

Claire.

Foggy muttered something about 'his girls', but good-naturedly left the room to give him some privacy.

He stared at where he supposed the screen was for a few moments, letting it ring one, two, three times, conflicting emotions, love, pain, angst, bubbling and battling within him.

Just before the call could go to voicemail, he picked up.

"Uh, hey Claire. What's up?" Almost as soon as he spoke the words, he regretted the awkward undertone he delivered them with and his rather poor word choice for the first time in months he'd spoken to the woman he loved.

She took a deep breath on the other end, and began speaking, her breath running too fast, her voice containing a particular little quiver he wished he couldn't identify as pain.

"Claire, are you alright? You sound kind of-" She cut him off before he could finish.

"No, no I'm fine." He imagined her smiling at him from across the city, waving her hand to pacify his concern even though he wasn't there/

"Just bumped into a counter at home. You busy tonight?" He dropped the bagel back down into the plate on his lap. What?

He tried to formulate some kind of response, his heart loudly speeding up in response to what sounded like feeling returned?

She kept talking, as though being pushed by someone, that little quiver only growing larger.

"I love you, you know that?" His mind ran a blank. He blindly glanced around the room, in shock at what Claire had said to him a second earlier.

"You- uh- what?"

"I love you. Seems I couldn't stop myself from falling in love with you after all." He could hear her stutter through the words, like she was injured and going through shock, like she was trying to say something important, something that had only been said in red, red dreams late at night. Like she hadn't just walked out of his life with a "I can't fall in love with a guy like you." Like he wasn't completely and utterly in love with Claire Temple, night nurse.

"Claire- I don't understand-"

"I love you." His girl sobbed out on the other side of the phone, his mind coming to a single conclusion.

"CLAIRE! Are you alright?" He caught a smack and a whimper from her side of the call.

"CLAIRE!" A gunshot was the last thing he heard before the call hung up.

**AN: Is it good? Should I continue? I had a couple other endings for this written out, but this one has the most 'positive', so to speak, ending, that also leaves it wide open for expansion.**

**Please, please drop me a review if you think so! Thank you so much, and know that every review encourages me to type another word for another fic :D**

**-hvrcules**


	2. I Love You Forever, Not Maybe

AN:** Aaaand I'm back. With another chapter. Because this fanfiction is now my baby and I feel bad leaving you all to think that something happened when a different thing happened. This gets real sappy. Like sappy sappy. But I figured it would work, considering exactly what this plot is, so sappiness is excusable? It gets kinda medical and action-y, a little less moving dialogue and beautiful poetry, but I'm saving all that for next chapter, worry not :)**

**To explain: if you didn't notice last chapter, I cut out parts of the torture sequence because I thought this would stay a oneshot and I didn't need to go into such great detail. Obviously, this is a little more explicit, but I was careful to make sure there were no inconsistencies in the plot so everything flows. I do describe stuff in greater detail in this chapter, but keep it in mind that there was a period of about 20 minutes between the time Claire refused to call Matt and the time she actually called him in the last chapter, which should help make her wounds a bit more explainable.**

**Idk but without further ado, here is Chapter 2!**

**Disclaimer (that applies to every chapter): Do you recognize it? Yes? Then it doesn't belong to me.**

"I love you." Rage flooded onto the man's face, his hand swiftly bringing the butt of the gun down on the left side of her head. She shied away from the blow, the cold metal instead smashing right into her ear.

He straightened up, aiming and cocking the gun at her head in one fluid motion. The phone fell to the floor, forgotten. His finger moved quickly, as sharp as a death sentence.

Claire quickly threw herself away from the shot, her rib cage and spinal cord protesting the sudden movement. The small bullet almost miraculously richocheted off her bonds. Before the business man could respond, she straightened up and forced herself away from the column, snapping her knee into his groin.

The link she'd weakened earlier shattered under the pressure, and she collapsed against the floor of the parking garage, her support lost. Before the man could crawl back up to his feet, Claire surged up once more, bracing herself against the bloodstained concrete cylinder and planting the heel of her injured foot straight into his skull.

A moment later, she pulled herself off the unconscious and possibly dying man, fumbling for the steadily beeping phone. Claire flipped it open clumsily, the stabbing, heart stopping pain of her broken fingers and toes slowly ebbing away into blessedly cold numbness.

She could faintly hear Matt shouting at her from the phone, but when she jerked her head around to position the phone all she could hear was fuzziness. The edges of her vision began to blacken.

He wanted her to tell him something. All Claire wanted was to wrap herself in his robe like she had when they'd first kissed, to fall asleep by his side and never wake up. He wanted to know where she was.

As if in a dream, she described her surroundings to him, trying to focus on his voice like he'd asked her to do a few seconds before.

"There's a- I think I'm- I'm in a parking garage." She could hear him, his breath and hispounding steps, heavy and fast like he was running. The sound was comforting. He was still alive. Fisk's men hadn't gone after him yet.

The sudden loss of sensation kicked her years of med school into gear almost automatically, categorizing and diagnosing her wounds within a few seconds. A compound skull fracture, a fracture where the laceration tears through all skin, bone, and tissue layers protecting the brain, cracked her skull and ruan through the middle ear section of her left ear. She absently realized that if she lived, she would most likely suffer from sensorineural hearing loss and be at least legally deaf in one ear.

"I meant what I said. I love you." She paused for a moment, gulping for air, suddenly unable to move air in and out of her lungs.

"No-nothing changes that, okay?"

"Just hold on Claire. I'm almost there." Something in her head brought itself to her attention. _He needs landmarks, _a past memory recalled. Almost instinctively, she murmured the name of the nearest skyscraper into the phone. A few words came through.

"And what shall I hold on to, hmm? I've got my hands full already, y'know." Her weak attempt at humor was forgotten as she focused on timing her own, shallower breaths with his deep, quick ones.

She tried to stumble away from her unconscious captor, dragging her right foot with her as she crawled as far away from him as she could manage. Her heart thudded through her chest, fast and weak, like a captured animal.

Her hand slipped on a patch of liquid, twisting her ribs and spine. _Ouch, _she thought. _Definitely bruised vertebrae and broken ribs._ Cautiously she poked at her side. A sharp, stabbing pain sounded through her nerves. _ Maybe even a hairline fracture in the scapula?_

Claire sprawled againt a parking barricade, using her other hand to push blood-soaked hair out of her face, crimson smearing into her skin.

*************** line break *********************

She was roughly pulled out of unconsciousness, black fuzz retreating to edges of her field of vision.

Matt was bent over her, his sightless eyes staring at a spot just past her bruised forehead. His hands, capable of so much damage, of so much suffering, of so much good, were propping her up, trying to get her to respond to his voice.

"I'm here. I've got you. I'm here." He began struggling to pull her up, trying his best to gently lift her limp body into his arms without jostling the broken bones he must've heard when he shook her awake.

"God, Claire. I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry..." Claire curled up in his arms as the bright flashing lights of the paramedics' ambulance and police cars around them bounced off the walls of the parking lot.

"Stay with me." She murmured to him.

"Stay with me."

"I don't see how I can go anywhere else." He managed to respond, helping the paramedics strap her into a gurney.

Someone inserted a needle into her arm, shooting her full of liquid ice cold exhaustion. The last thing Claire saw was a man helping Matthew up into the ambulance next to her.

**AN: Were y'all surprised? Should I keep going? I hope I explained the medical terms well enough, and that this would be pretty in character considering the trauma I just put Claire and Matt through! Let me know if you need a deeper definition or something. I'm also considering also posting an optional ending where she doesn't make it out alive, as well as this one. Please write a review so I can know if you guys wanna see it, and thank you for reading :D**


	3. AU: Baby Can You See Through The Tears

**AN: Alrighty! I got some p good feedback, so here's the mini alternate ending. This one's sad guys. Just- sad. Prepare your emotions.**

The man apathetically unlocked the handcuffs and chain bonds holding the corpse upright. His own smartphone beeped from the silk pocket of his crisp 3 piece suit.

"It is done, Mr. Fisk."

"Continue as planned. Make him-" His employer coughed, the harsh, hacking sound coming out loudly out of the phone speaker.

"Make him feel my pain."

"Of course, Mr. Fisk." He quickly shut off the call, seamless pulling the empty cadaver off the floor and onto his shoulder.

The blood covered phone that had fallen to floor caught his attention as the ringtone went off, signalling another call. His Italian leather covered toe flipped it over, the cracked screen revealing 'Daredevil' was calling back. _Pathetic, _he thought, as he crushed it under his heel and silenced the phone permanently.

*******line break***********

Of course, the front page news story the next day was about the body of a Claire Temple, head nurse at Metro-General Hospital, found impaled on an iron rod on top of a building between West 54th and West 56th, the words "Hello, Daredevil" painted in what was discovered to be her blood.

That morning, Matthew Murdock, lawyer and partner at Nelson &amp; Murdock law firm, was reported missing.

Two days later, Wilson Fisk was found dismembered and disembowled in his cell.

'Daredevil', the vigilante hero of Hell's Kitchen, was said to have been replaced by 'the Devil of Hell's Kitchen'.

After a few months in which every member of Wilson Fisk's crime ring, both incarcerated and undercover, were found brutually tortured and murdered (in the police report they would note that the injuries of the deceased all mimicked the injuries discovered on Claire Temple's corpse), he was never seen again.

**AN: Short and sweet. Expect the next chapter continuing the actual ending at some point tomorrow!**


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